The invention relates to the field of previewing multimedia data.
With the proliferation of video content, methods for providing thumbnail representation of such content are essential for efficient video management and browsing. Thumbnails are typically created by sampling representative frames from temporal segments, or scenes of a video stream, and creating lower resolution versions of those frames. The thumbnails provide a reduced-bandwidth format to identify and organize the video stream.
Many video players are provided with a time bar that graphically displays the timely progress of a rendering of the video stream by the video player. The sequence of the frames is of the video stream is uniformly mapped onto the time bar, such that any fraction of video stream that has been rendered is indicated by an equivalent shaded or highlighted fraction of the time bar. For example, if half the video stream has been rendered, half the time bar may be shaded. As a user scrolls across a location on the time bar, such as by using a mouse pointer, one or more thumbnails associated with the video stream portion corresponding to the location may be displayed.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the specification and a study of the figures.